I have noticed a trend semi-recently that is maybe bigger than I think. According to thisit is. I will be watching a commercial and a little logo for the Shazam app will pop up in the corner subtly suggesting I pull out my smart phone, open up my Shazam app and record a portion of the commercial to be taken online to more info about the product or service.

When I first saw this I thought “Hey, that’s not a horrible idea for getting people to take action”. This was coming from the marketing side of my brain.

But, recently I have been thinking “How is this much different from a QR code, which I generally don’t scan?”

So, will Shazam eventually go the way of the QR code and become a fad of sorts? I think that any form of “taking action” on a smart phone that requires you have an app already installed will eventually fall to the wayside. But, cashing in on fads is what advertising does. So, perhaps I’m just sitting this fad out.

I think that NFC technology has more potential due to the fact that it is based simply on hardware and is already baked-in to the phone’s software. Obviously, NFC is not widely adopted and could, itself, fall to the wayside.

So, anyone here “Shazam” commercials? Do you think it’s a good way to get people to take action? What other ways or apps could advertisers use to get people to fumble to get their smart phones out and perform a task in 30 seconds? I know my phone always decides to lag tremendously when I need it in a pinch.

Nice article. The one time I tried to shazam a commercial with the shazam logo on it, the app could not recognize the song. So I am convinced that apps keep coming out that have great potential but just not quite there yet (here’s looking at you Siri).